The Visit
by Pat Foley
Summary: Spock comes home from Starfleet for the first time. Chapter seven up. Part of the Holography series, Holo 3-H
1. Chapter 1

**The Visit**

**by**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 1**

_Amanda's tale_

The end of a Vulcan summer is a season of violent contrasts. After weeks of life threateningly high temperatures, when to be on the open desert courts sunstroke even for Vulcans, when the air becomes so parched you feel as if you can't draw one more dry rattled gasp, when it seems the long, torrid summer will never end, then, finally, autumn comes, unexpected even though you knew it would and must. A surprising reprieve from the fiery heat, from bakingly dry days, from hot arid nights that had become your whole existence, to the point where you couldn't imagine drawing another comfortable breath.

On Vulcan, autumn doesn't mean a change of leaves, a nip of frost in the air, but rather violent air shifts, wild storms, sheets of rain that turn the deserts into dangerous quagmires, high winds from mountains to desert that can sandblast the flesh from your bones, electrical storms that send daggers of lightening slashing into the ground, or through anything that stands in their way.

Perhaps that was an omen.

This was when Spock came home for his first visit.

Coaxing Spock home wasn't easy. I spent hours in subspace calls brokering an uneasy truce with Spock regarding his former home. He was wary. Very nearly unwilling. But he had promised. And Vulcans are sticklers for keeping their word.

With Sarek, it was different. He professed indifference to the prospect of a visit from his wayward child. I'd already made it clear before Spock left that my son had to have the right to come home whenever he wished. Essentially I'd threatened to leave myself if he couldn't. And as I had stayed with my husband through an even more difficult time, Sarek held to his tacit promise. He would not say a word against Spock's upcoming visit.

Not much of a word for it either.

Or perhaps, to his son.

He certainly wasn't saying much about it to me.

But I thought to cross that bridge when we came to it. To manifest a human sentiment, I didn't choose to borrow trouble. My first goal was to get my child home. Then I'd broker a reconciliation between my two stubborn Vulcans. After all this time, Sarek had to accept his son's choice. My husband was Vulcan. And 95 percent of the time, being Vulcan meant being logical, reasonable. It was only occasionally that their passions, their tempers came to the forefront, past their control. Sarek had been caught unaware before by his son's unsuspected plans, but now, he'd had time to marshal his disciplines. Time to get used to the idea, to forgive, even forget the worst of that terrible breach. Time to resolve, to rebuild a relationship with his son. So I hoped. Sarek wasn't talking. And I had sworn to myself not to push, not to nag him. It was next to impossible to force my stubborn husband into something against his position anyway. I would let him see his son, realize how good it was to have him back, even if briefly, and let that persuade more effectively than I ever could. Surely even a Vulcan could realize it was better to have a son in Starfleet, temporarily, than no son at all. And that Spock had come back, I hope would prove to Sarek that he could, and would again. Someday for good. To return to the duties and traditions Sarek expected of him.

It all made good logical sense to me. Human common sense. So I harbored a few expectations of my own for that longed for reconciliation. Human expectations.

How often I forget that I am living with, dealing with, Vulcans. Yet it is hard, even for me, to see things through an alien perspective. And even after twenty-plus years of being bonded to Sarek, he is alien to me. Still.

Alien. And as unexpected, as surprisingly unpredictable as the end of a Vulcan summer. At least to human expectations.

**xxx**

And then at last, the Starfleet term ended, and Spock was free to leave Terra.

He came home the long cheap route, shuttling from one Federation government vessel to another, everything from starships, to mail couriers, to tramp merchant vessels hired to carry government cargo, the latter ships being ones to which I wouldn't trust a shipment of books, much less a beloved and very precious son. But Spock refused the first class ticket on a passenger liner I offered, preferring to return home the way all Starfleet cadets do before their first posting, deadheaded where ever space could be found for him. Nothing unusual in that. As his trustee, I periodically reviewed his finances. Though he was an adult under Federation law, he was still a child by Vulcan standards. He had gotten very good, expert, at subsisting on Starfleet standard issue. In fact, he hadn't touched a credit in his personal accounts on Vulcan since he left. I asked him, sometimes worriedly, if he was wearing warm enough clothing, if he was eating properly. I sent him gifts, the kind of "CARE" packages mothers send their sons away at school. He had, after all, been something of a privileged child on Vulcan. Well, let's face it, a very privileged child, for all that his Vulcan control and discipline denied him the ability to feel much of the enjoyment of that privilege. I wasn't sure exactly how standard Starfleet "standard issue" really was. And I had my doubts about how well it would suit a Vulcan, who must have some special needs in that Terran dominated organization. But apparently he found it suited well enough. He would raise an ironic brow at my mother-henning and formally acknowledge the gifts, but said nothing about enjoying them or wanting more. About wanting anything from home. Missing anything. Needing anything. That made me a bit uneasy.

But now that he was coming home, I could at least make his stay here comfortable. I couldn't chivvy T'Rueth out of my kitchen, her kitchen now, and I didn't really want to. She was a better cook than I was anyway, particularly with the Vulcan dishes Spock hadn't tasted since he left. But I put her to preparing a host of Spock's favorite foods. For once we weren't going to eat the mélange of Terran and Vulcan produce that our gardens grew; I arranged for purely Vulcan meals. Spock had surely had enough of Terran foods on Terra. I had the gardeners force and harvest some special crops of Vulcan fruits and vegetables that Spock particularly liked. I made sure his suite of rooms was woken up from stasis conditions, cleaned and stocked with anything I thought he'd need or want. I had his flyer, sitting forlorn in its hanger bay all this long while, pulled out, serviced and maintained, ready to take him anywhere on planet he cared to go. I even called Sofet, on the board of Vulcan Science Academy. Spock had turned down two instructorships there before, and there was no reason to suppose the third would be the charm, but I wanted the offer made anyway. At least he'd have one highly placed mentor from his past life welcoming him home. I couldn't count on his father to do that. But I could rely on his grandmother. I notified T'Pau of his arrival, even though I'd leave him to make his own arrangements to wait on her. It would be improper for me to do that for him. In short, I was fussing. Filled with excitement about having Spock home again. And not making any effort to control any of this.

Sarek watched me flying around in this whirlwind of preparations. He behaved exactly as usual, particularly when his human wife was being overly emotional. He notched up his Vulcan reserve. And he continued to say little.

That was fine with me. I didn't expect him to exactly slaughter a sheep, even if we had one, or do anything similar to the legendary prodigal son routines. I'd settle for him being Vulcan, in the best sense of that. And that's exactly what he was being. I took that as a good sign. A hopeful sign.

It wouldn't be the first time my limited knowledge of what it really meant to be Vulcan tripped me up.

**xxx**

After all my anxieties and all my planning, Spock's actual homecoming was uneventful. He didn't beam down into the main hall with a burst of transporter sparkles – such new technology would never be used or wasted on cadets – at least I hoped not. I didn't quite trust it, nor want to trust any of my family to it. Nor did he let me know of his vessel or exact arrival time, so I could greet his ship, perhaps he feared embarrassingly, at the terminal. No, he arrived uneventfully, taking a cab from the spaceport. The guard notified me when Spock signaled for the unauthorized vehicle's clearance through the security net. I came flying downstairs from my office to see him simply walk through the front, door, dropping a little carrybag at his feet, for all the world as if he were merely coming home from a day's lessons at the VSA. The ordinariness struck me almost as much as his appearance.

"Oh," I said, halting halfway down the stairs. My first reaction was how tall he was. I finished coming down the stairs, and crossed to him, still stunned by the look of him. On a subspace message, one got so used to looking down at the screen, at the little foreshortened figures displayed there, so often just head and shoulders, it was disconcerting to have to look up. And up. And up. "Oh, my. Just **look** at you."

Spock took me literally and panned down at himself. A Vulcan version of navel gazing. "Is something wrong?"

I laughed at his bent head, wondering if he was being the Vulcan equivalent of cute. He had a mischievous streak just like his father. And, come to think of it, like his mother. "Yes, you brat. You could at least give me a hug after all this time."

He flung up his head at that, wary and defensive as always at such emotional expectations. His silky hair, still cut into bangs and so unlike his father's wiry curls, fell instantly into place. That hadn't changed. Nor his mulish expression at my expecting anything human from him. "Mother."

"Then at least let **me** hug **you**."

"If you will," he said, professing indifference. But I think at heart he was not adverse.

I closed the space between us, and flung my arms around him. I could feel him tense. At one time in our lives, this had upset me, this seeming recoil. But now I knew it for what it as. As a touch telepath, he was simply marshalling his shields against betraying his thoughts to me, or mine to him.

I still couldn't get over how tall he was. He still had the weedy look of a Vulcan adolescent, though, and as I closed my arms around him I could feel how lean and sparse he was. He wouldn't get the powerful, stocky look of an adult male until he was fully adult, mid-sixties or so. But as I clutched him to me, I could feel how solid that slender frame was. My child was indeed growing up. He had steel in his muscles, and he felt less like a little boy, and more like a man, Vulcan warm, and Vulcan scented. And yet my child, forever and always. I knew him regardless of what he was, could have picked him blindfolded out of any crowd. He shifted, slightly uncomfortable in that unused to close embrace, and I stepped half a pace back, not wanting to stress him. Then found myself hugging him, fiercely, just once more before I did let go. He didn't often allow this. Who knew when he'd let me hug him again? "Thank you."

"The …gesture…was not unpleasant to me." He said, his eyes softening from control to almost a warm look. A rare concession from him. Perhaps he was glad to be home. Or at least to see me.

"'Affection is a pressure I can bear,'" I quoted wickedly.

"Eleanor of Aquitaine," Spock said immediately, surprising me. He'd done some extra-curricular reading since he'd left Vulcan.

"My, what a knowledgeable family we are. That surely wasn't in your Starfleet curriculum" I teased back, then added, "Sorry, what a poor reference. I don't expect this to be **that** sort of family gathering."

"I should hope not. Certainly I have not come here with any demands or expectations."

"Just to have you home again is enough for me. For now," I qualified, and shook my head. "You are earlier than you'd said."

"There was a fast diplomatic courier that was not on the original schedule," Spock shrugged, a human shrug. I was surprised at that, he was usually careful not to display human mannerisms. "I was transferred to it, and it cut another half a day from my journey.

"So I can see. You might have called, but I won't scold you. I suppose you hadn't the opportunity. I am glad I stayed home from work today, just in case."

"Surely there was no need for that?" he said, raising a brow, sounding just like his father. Human shrugs aside. Vulcan still, he couldn't understand neglecting a duty for an emotional need.

"Oh, I couldn't have concentrated anyway, I was so excited over seeing you again. How often does my son get leave from Starfleet? And now, I can't get over how tall you are. I'm getting a crick in my neck craning up at you. You are going to be taller than your father, I think." I noticed for the first time how he was dressed. "Spock, that uniform! You can't mean to wear that here."

He looked down at himself again, as if his attire surprised him. As if he'd already left Starfleet behind. Well, I could hope, couldn't I?

"I was required to wear it while in transit, as my travel arrangements were official. But now that I am formally on leave, I can forgo it."

"Then let's get you settled and changed." I shook my head at the outlandish cadet uniform. Like a pair of pajamas. "I certainly don't want your father to see you looking like that."

Spock raised a brow. "Mother, he knows I am in Starfleet. The uniform is merely the outward manifestation of that commitment."

"You don't have to hit him over the head with it." I glanced at him, not sure if he understood the idiom. "Figuratively speaking."

Spock didn't comment on the phrase. Instead he raised his head, almost like a hunting dog scenting the air. In fact, stretching out with a telepath's senses, for a hint of his father's aura. "Is he …home?" Spock asked.

"He's at Council, of course. He won't be back till this evening."

Spock hesitated, stirred, uneasy. "I am not sure…that I should be here. I had much time to consider it, on the journey."

"Hence the long cheap route home."

Spock didn't disagree. "I came to no firm conclusions."

"I'm grateful you're making the effort. Don't give up now. Just give it a chance. For me. Please?"

Spock drew breath, drew the thin Vulcan air into his lungs. And let it out slowly. In acceptance. "I am…here."

"So you are." I took his arm in mine. He didn't pull away. "You'll need to call your grandmother today, and arrange for an audience. It wouldn't be politic not to, though you can wait a couple of days to see her. But for now, perhaps some tea? Are you hungry? T'Rueth has been cooking and baking for days, all the things I've told you about in my letters." He didn't say anything, so I answered for him. "Of course, you're hungry, you're thin as a rail. And we can have a nice chat. You can tell me all about Starfleet. And about Earth. It's been ages since I've been to Terra."

"I have been telling you," Spock said. "In my messages."

"Oh, you know I'm human. I don't have your memory. Tell me again," I teased, "It will be all the same to me."

"Mother," he adjured, but this time with half a smile. "I am somewhat…more familiar…with human qualities now than I was. Such dissembling serves neither of us."

"So I've been busted have I? All my secrets and lies shattered? That's what I get for letting you run away to sea?"

"I did no such thing."

"Poetic license. You've obviously been reading enough to recognize it when you hear it."

"Starfleet curriculum is primarily designed for human abilities. As a Vulcan I had much time free for additional...research. But there was one thing I did not learn on Terra," Spock added with an arched brow.

"Oh, what was that?"

"I really still have no conception of why my father married you."

"Ouch. Brat is right. You **have** learned too much," I said. "Anyway, all that was so long ago, I surely can't remember any of it. Human memory being what it is." I teased again.

He flicked a brow in resignation. "I have **not** a Terran memory, mother. I remember your teasing, quite well. Particularly when you wish not to discuss a subject."

"And you have changed, enough to call me on it." He didn't reply, and I took advantage of my position to change the subject. He might be bold enough now to ask such questions, but not to insist on answers that I wasn't ready to give him. "Speaking of change, let's have you change out of that uniform. And then we can have tea and you can tell me all the horrid stories about Terra and Fleet that you didn't dare put into a subspace squirt." I led him away, still arm in arm. And he allowed it. Whether through his perception of my needs or some finally permitted need of his own, I didn't care. It was enough to have him really back. Willing to meet me halfway.

One Vulcan down, one to go.

_To be continued…_


	2. Chapter 2

**The Visit**

**by**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 2**

_Spock's tale_

There is a Terran saying. "One can't go home again."

I thought about that, through the long journey home from Terra to Vulcan. Wondering if I was going to be Terran or Vulcan in this regard. The continual question of my life, rising anew like the dragons in the Terran fairy tales my mother once read to me, dragons who grew another head for each one that was lopped off by the hero. If there is a hero in my story, I don't know whom it might be. Vulcans always go home. We can't avoid it. For a Vulcan, the saying would be "One **must** go home again."

How huge, the gap between the species of which I am formed. And how contrary. Not merely different, but so often nearly in total opposition. Emotion and control. Passion and logic. Can't and must.

And here I am, caught again. No matter what steps I take in my life to reconcile the two sides of my nature, they are again in opposition.

I had no real wish to return home again, to raise the specter of that conflict, both internal and familial. But at my mother's insistence, and because of my promise, even if made under duress, I had thought it was probably best to try to go home. At least for this visit. Knowing sooner or later I would be forced to, that biology would require it, and that my stay in Starfleet was never meant to be more than temporary. To rebuild the roots of what, someday, must serve as my home.

For when I **must** go home again. To stay.

And yet, for all my hesitance, upon arriving home, it was as if I had never left. As if the months, the years on Terra were inconsequential. The welcome pull of Vulcan gravity, the dryness of the air, the scent of the wind off the Forge. And the warmth. I had not realized how much, how long, I had been holding myself against shivers until I stepped off the shuttle onto the hard packed sand of the spaceport ground and felt the heat of Vulcan envelope me like my mother's embrace. For the first time in two years, I was warm. I felt home, as if I had returned to my rightful place in the universe, as Terra could never be for me. I am Vulcan in that.

_So far_, my mother would say, _so good_.

I try not to let her human expressions creep into my thoughts, much less my speech. But it can be difficult. I am the child of a Terran woman, fanciful, beautiful, arch and amusing. As well that of a Vulcan male, steeped in logic and tradition, controlled, sometimes controlling. Often demanding. But my mother had her demands as well.

I feel my mother with me always, the more so since I left Vulcan. In part, the result of my parental bond, though it is not much of a link. At my age, I can shield fully against it. Perhaps I feel my mother more because, since I made the decision to leave Vulcan, I have not felt my father at all. Sarek. I must remember to use the given name, to guard against using the parental title, at least not unless he uses the equivalent to me. I have no idea whether he will or no, and I can't tell from my mother's words. She avoids specifics, with a deftness worthy of a Vulcan. But I suspect my father has little changed in his views.

She has not gone home again.

On Terra I was constantly reminded of my mother. Sometimes, walking through a crowd, I would see a figure ahead that looked like her, her shining hair, her slight stature, something of her walk. I would never see her like on Vulcan, except when it really was she. Humans there are so rare. Though even on Vulcan, she is rarely without a Vulcan escort, a guard, making a distinctive presence at her side. But still the expectation is there in me. So when I see a figure like her, my first thought is that it is her, despite the illogic of it. I would, even inadvertently, quicken my steps a moment, even knowing through the telepathic reverberations through the bond that it was not she. And when I had caught up, and caught the stranger's wondering gaze to find me, a Vulcan, behind this stranger, it would be a double blow to my senses. It took a while to realize that this trick of the senses meant that I missed my mother, that this was the emotional fall out from that state. No doubt very unVulcan of me. But as the half-human son of a very human mother, living on Terra as I was, going to a Federation school in preparation for a Federation military career, in violation of all my father's Vulcan sensibilities and the teachings of my clan, I wondered, really, how Vulcan I could expect myself to be?

I tell myself I am Vulcan. I always have. A mantra I have tried to live by, since my earliest years. At times it seems that I am Vulcan.

But it wasn't until this moment, when I returned home, to my planet of birth, even born of a human woman as I am, that I felt reaffirmed as a Vulcan. That Vulcan really is home. After a long absence, a self imposed exile, it claims me anew. My birthright. I draw the air of the Forge into my lungs and I quiet my metabolism after two years of shivering and I know it to be true. I am Vulcan. My mother is human and I may make a home elsewhere for a time, but I will always be Vulcan. I cannot be anything but Vulcan. Regardless of how far I stray. I suppose my father – Sarek – would be pleased at that.

And thus **must** go home is the thought that crosses my mind, a little ironic whisper, reminder, plaint.

The true test, of course, is to actually go home. To beard the lion in his den. To face Sarek.

I don't want to.

And that is the thought of a child. I have put childhood behind me in leaving Vulcan. Eschewed the long adolescence of a Vulcan, mentored and watched over by my elders, for a Terran adulthood. Some would say a premature adulthood. I try not to validate that view.

I collect my bag, find public transportation and watch the desert wheel and swing through the aircar screens as I fly toward that final destination. Feasting my eyes on the long missed desert. I must go and walk there. Perhaps tonight.

And then the house, the old Fortress, lived in by my family for millennia appears and I shiver anew, remembering my last leavetaking.

And I think I should not be here.

Yet, I promised. And a promise is a promise.

I had promised to grow up Vulcan, too.

The guard lets me through the forcefields, and in a moment, the gardens, the house, surrounds me. At one time in my life, I thought to never return here again. And yet, here I am.

And then, the woman who drew me back across lightyears, across my own convictions to stay away, against my father's desire to have me exiled comes toward me. And then stops.

I'm not sure what she sees in me, that transfixes her so.

Nor do I understand what my father sees in her.

She's not particularly prepossessing. One could lose her in a crowd on Terra, and not notice her. She is attractive, by Terran standards, but not a particular beauty. Small, not statuesque. Her coloring is favored by Terrans but not Vulcans. She is intelligent, but even the best of human intelligence has severe limitations compared to Vulcan abilities. Superficially, she looks and seems like any human, so ordinary she could be indented for.

In my Federation law class at Starfleet Academy, I was even told what the going rate might be. Humans are furious over the growing predilection for Orion slave dealers to trade in human as well as Orion females. Starfleet has been taxed with stopping the practice, but the Orions are not easily deterred. Humans are so numerous. When one shipment is confiscated, there are many others to make up the loss. According to our instructor, both a Starfleet Commander as well as a Federation judge, Orion traders even take special orders. He described one raid whose "cargo" included several different types of entertainers, two physicians, a prominent jurist that one of the smugglers had taken a fancy to in a previous court appearance, and a teacher, a university professor. He was particularly incensed over the jurist. But my attention was riveted by the reference to the latter captive.

My mother is a university professor.

It's rather disturbing to realize she could be kidnapped, sold, for a mere few thousand credits, far less than what my parents paid for a single quarter of my tuition at the VSA.

No wonder my father has her so closely guarded when she is off Vulcan. And even, at times, on Vulcan.

I listened uneasily to the class' discussion on the Orion problem, but the question foremost on my mind, and one that I never dare raise, was why? Why would Orion traders, who for centuries have practiced a lucrative, and legal, business in selling Orion females, branch out into the illegal selling of humans? Humans who, if based on my own limited knowledge of the species, or at least of one human woman, would make quite unsatisfactory slaves.

At the heart of this is my real question, one I've never had answered, that has nothing to do with Orion males or slavery. Why would my father, who could have had any eligible Vulcan female he wished, reject 5000 years of Vulcan tradition and choose a Terran for a wife?

I've asked my mother before. Periodically. And she always refuses to take my question seriously, as if it is the question of a child. She teases, or evades. I asked my father only once, and he pointedly ignored the question, a lesson in itself. When Sarek of Vulcan ignores a question, no one lightly raises it again.

Except, perhaps for my mother. She would dare anything. Her casual, irreverent, prosaic treatment of my father periodically awed me. In eighteen years on Vulcan, I saw him routinely deferred to by diplomats, High Council members, Federation officials, even T'Pau on most issues. When Sarek went away on Federation business, he almost always returned with his points secured. No one dared challenge him, few successfully opposed him for long. Except for my mother, who argued with him unimpressed by his superior skills in logic, teased him regardless of his Vulcan reserve, opposed him even when he stated his position plainly, even raised her voice to him in anger. She used all her skills, logic, humor, passion. Undaunted, unimpressed and unafraid.

I never saw anyone else like her. She amazed me. And intimidated me. I could not understand why my father tolerated this one sole irreverent voice in his distinguished existence. When they disagreed, and it was not uncommon that they did, opposites as they were, when my father was displeased with her and let her know it, she often tossed her head in defiance, narrowed her flashing blue eyes, and snapped right back at him.

And quite frequently, she won. Not always, but often enough that I used to look at her small frame, and wonder where she hid all that strength. And what bottomless source it welled from.

And if I possessed anything like it. If I am not my father's son, am I my mothers?

Oh, she often bowed her head with deference and obeyed him when he spoke to her in the emphatic mode. As I did. As I had to. But she did it when she chose to.

Hence the reasons I believe human females would be useless to the Orions.

And perhaps the reason why I, at eighteen years of age, chose not to obey my father. I am my mother's son as well. Or strive to be. At least in some respects.

And yet my question, the one that has plagued me all my life, remains unanswered. And it is not prurient interest on my part, but the riddle of my existence. Why would Sarek of Vulcan choose a human female? If the reason was logical, why would he not tell it?

And if the reason was not? I can hardly dare to think that.

And yet must.

If the reason was **not** logical, then the whole myth of Vulcans, my own personal struggle for perfect logic and non-emotion, the standards required of me, the Vulcan way I strive to emulate is simply… a farce. A lie. A misconception.

As I was?

Am I a product of logic, or emotion? I have a right to know.

A need to know.

A need that has made me leave Vulcan and go to Terra, to Starfleet. Because I must know more of my existence than logic and my parents will tell me.

And yet… here I am. Home again. Because my willful, teasing, imperious mother requires it of me. And like my father, I sometimes accede to her, even when logic might dictate otherwise. Let her hug me, hold me.

It isn't logical.

And yet at times, it seems logical, to cede to emotion.

The riddle of my existence, of life. My life.

A question that I seek an answer to.

And wonder if I will find the answer here, at home. At last.

_To be continued…_


	3. Chapter 3

**The Visit**

**by**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 3**

_Amanda's tale_

After all this time it was hard for me to believe that Spock was really home. And that he was going to stay. At least for a bit. I chatted nervously as I walked with him up the long staircase to his suite, feeling almost that if I stopped talking, he'd turn around and walk out the door. Again. Not that he was showing signs of doing that. But his face was set in rather controlled lines, and I couldn't really read him as we walked upstairs. He had seemed fairly unaffected in the great hall, but as we moved further into the house, he seemed to be taking everything in with the slightest air of shock, manifested by a deeper Vulcan control. As if he were just realizing we weren't conversing by video. As if, now that his journey was over, he couldn't quite believe he was home again. And was still undecided if he wanted to be. As if the walls, so to speak, were closing in around him.

I knew something of that. The Fortress can be a tenacious home.

"I don't think we've changed much here since you've been away," I said.

"No," Spock said shortly.

"Except for the pool. You'll have to see that. I haven't managed to coax your father to swim in it, but you might like to."

"I believe I have had enough of that on Terra. Starfleet cadets must learn to swim as part of survival training."

"Do you expect to encounter many bodies of water, out there in space?" I teased. "If so, I've missed an important aspect of astronomy."

"I imagine it is for planetfalls. Not all Starfleet cadets can swim. Fortunately due to your lessons, I managed to be exempted from those lessons after proving a competency."

I thought about that, those lessons I'd given Spock in the Thendaran ambassador's pool. Remembered them as if they were yesterday. Spock dog paddling in the warm water, I-Chiya, anxious and woofing, very nearly frantic, pacing the tiled edge, forbidden to enter lest his long coat clog the filtration system. Not to mention it's hard to teach a child to swim with a sehlat nanny dragging him by the non-existent scruff of his neck back out to dry land. For a moment the memory almost blinded me, sunlight sparkling off the lapping ripples as Spock paddled and frog-kicked, finally finding a stroke that would enable his denser Vulcan body to stay buoyant. He'd learned quickly, Vulcan strength even then compensating for the heavier bone and denser muscle that hindered him as a human would not have been. But he hadn't been pleased about the lessons. At that time, he was anxious to prove he was fully Vulcan. And Vulcans never swim.

I drew a breath, and prattled again, to chase away the memories that threatened to overwhelm me. "I'm glad," I said. "You can see there's not much new here. Except for the staff, but I've told you all about them." We took the second staircase that led up a long flight to his suite. Fortunately I was in good shape because it was quite a climb. I stood back to let him precede me into the rooms. They were his, after all. I gave them a nervous glance as he entered. I'd had them cleaned and stocked with anything I thought he'd need or want, but Spock had been fairly self sufficient before he'd left home and had largely seen to his own needs. It was possible I'd missed something.

If there was, he didn't seem to notice. When you go home again, everything is supposed to look smaller, but I imagine that living out of a cramped Starfleet dorm room in crowded San Francisco for the past two years, his former home couldn't really seem all that much smaller. Perhaps it seemed huge. For one thing, being touch telepaths, Vulcans value personal space. Vulcan is a large planet, relatively speaking compared to Terra, and Vulcans not being all that numerous a species, they never had any reason to crowd themselves up. And the Fortress was overwhelming on first impression anyway, built to house many branches of a large clan. Spock's room really was a suite, and could have housed a small family. He actually had more room than Sarek and I, since we shared a similar suite. In fact, Spock's rooms had belonged to Sarek at one time. After our marriage, when we returned to Vulcan, Sarek moved into our present quarters both because it was the traditional suite for the clan leader, and because, being on a lower floor, it meant less climbing up stairs in heavy gravity for me. Spock had moved into this one from his old nursery just after his Kahs Wan. It was traditional. I hadn't been keen on the idea but Sarek, and Spock, had overruled me.

Like ours, his rooms had a public antechamber that the outside door opened into, then a large private living area, and a master bedroom, complete with a bath with Terran as well as Vulcan plumbing, something I'd insisted on. When Spock came in with several layers of desert sand plastered to him, I was still human enough to insist on a good scrubbing. It also had a meditation chamber with one wall carved out of the living rock of the mountain, just like Sarek's study in our own suite. And several smaller rooms that could serve as offices or other bedrooms, for the family he might one day raise here. It was my goal that would still happen, if I could get my stubborn Vulcans reconciled.

Spock had never used the antechamber, filled with formal reception furniture, for anything but to pass through. The living area, though, he'd set up as his schoolroom/workroom. It was the largest room in the suite, with the same dazzling view of the Llangon mountains as ours. Because it was so high up in the house, it had not merely a balcony, its doors opened on the terraced rooftop gardens, with paths leading up to the high parapets that Sarek used for meditation. I'd strongly objected to Spock moving to these rooms when he was so young, barely six, and if I'd have had my choice, I'd have disfigured the terraces with the Vulcan equivalent of galvanized fencing, so worried had I been that he would take a tumble off the roof. But Sarek had demurred that Vulcan children are never so clumsy. And Spock had had I-Chiya, as a sort of four legged nanny to watch over him. I'd been forced to worry. But Vulcan in that, he had never tumbled or put a foot wrong. In that respect, at least.

His workroom was large, but every corner was filled with computers, scientific and musical instruments nestled on shelves or hanging on pegs on the walls, workstations, books, and other signs of a life spent in one kind of purposeful activity or another. It looked like what it was, the room of a very organized, very accomplished and very privileged child. I hadn't changed but one thing. I'd had the formal acknowledgement of his last mren-to from the Vulcan Science Academy, the Vulcan equivalent of a doctorate, framed and hung on the walls beside the first, one for computer science, the second for astrophysics, both of them next to a series of similar educational certificates, from pre-school to university. I imagine Starfleet found both his professional areas of study useful, but given how he was chosing to spend them, perhaps Sarek would have been happier had he pursued English literature.

Spock crossed to this, the only unfamiliar object in his rooms and stared at it pensively for a moment.

"It came after you left," I said.

He nodded. Then his gaze dropped to the print framed over his desk. One of the Tenniel illustrations from _Alice in Wonderland_, it showed Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and below it, their outrageous statement regarding logic: _Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic. _I'd given it to Spock, along with an annotated Alice, in his eighth year, when Vulcans seriously begin the study of the logical disciplines. Sarek had, needless to say, been displeased with me -- say quietly furious in his restrained Vulcan way -- over such an inappropriate gift. I suppose it had been rather wicked of me, filling his son and heir's head with Terran nonsense masquerading as logic at the same moment Spock was just beginning the years' long study of the grueling Vulcan disciplines. But Sarek hadn't taken it away from Spock, in spite of a past history that included serious words to me in our son's preschool days about the illogical filling of his head with fairy tales and the eventual banning of the same. He hadn't dared, I suppose. At that time, we were engaging in a rather serious battle over the education, or rather the soul, of our son. I hadn't minded Spock being raised Vulcan, but when I'd agreed to that, it had been with the understanding that it would be the kind of Vulcan I expected, the Vulcan Sarek had been when I first met, and married him. But Sarek had been fast becoming inflexible when it came to his expectations regarding Spock, or the logical automaton he seemed to expect our son should become. And with Tenniel and Alice, I suppose I'd been staking my claim to at least a part of my son. Or engaging in a little underhanded sabotage. Spock had devoured Alice, had included the word "contrariwise" in his vocabulary for weeks. And had kept the print hung over his desk ever since.

"Perhaps I should have taken that with me," Spock said, with the barest hint of a smile.

I smiled back, but to have agreed would, to me at least, have implied he couldn't have both on Vulcan, his human and Vulcan sides. And I didn't agree with that. For all that Sarek was full Vulcan, he had a mischievous sense of humor when in the right mood and could tease me mercilessly. But for some reason my son never seemed to see that. And Sarek never seemed willing to give Spock that right, to share all his father's moods and tempers. "You can if you like," I allowed. "But I think it looks perfect here."

His eyes met mine with disarming candor, and then, as if embarrassed, looked away.

"You knew it wasn't logic," I said.

He didn't pretend to misunderstand me. "I knew…that it was logic of a peculiarly Terran sort," Spock returned. "And quite logical in that respect."

I shook my head and changed the subject, not sure what to make of that, and instead, edged into the dressing room/bath. "There are clothes in your wardrobe. I made my best approximations of the sizes." I glanced into his bedroom. Everything was fresh and neat, and again unchanged. There were Vulcan – not Terran -- sheets on the bed, made of the finest spintassle fiber. Even though his Vulcan father preferred Terran Egyptian cotton, jacquard loomed in Italy and imported at prodigious expense. And a tapestry coverlet on the bed with the clan arms, one fitting for an heir, old, if not as priceless a relic as the coverlet that graced the clan leader's bed. And across the bed, on one of the high shelves that held such books and items of childhood long relinquished but never discarded, the Paddington bear I'd given him as an infant, its tiny suitcase forever packed, carrying a note that said, "Please take care of this bear." I suddenly felt my throat constrict with tears, and realized I'd better get out of here soon, before I completely disgraced myself.

"Come down when you're ready and we'll have tea. And let me know if there's anything I forgot."

"I'm sure there is nothing," Spock said. And finally, put down his little carry bag. His words were a little overlaid with meaning. As if he sensed my sudden emotion.

He obviously hadn't forgotten much either. Memories can be kind and unkind. I left him standing in the center of eighteen years of them. Some even I had trouble reconciling.

No wonder the poor child hesitated to come home.

Coming down the stairs, I met T'Jar and arranged for tea. Not on the terrace. It was too hot for that at midday. And then I veered into Sarek's office, and his communications terminal. I wanted to let him know Spock was home. At long last.

I hoped he'd be as happy as I was in that. And more important, would show at least the Vulcan equivalent of that to his son and heir. It was past time **that** Vulcan legacy was communicated.

_To be continued_


	4. Chapter 4

**The Visit**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 4**

_Sarek's tale_

Today is a day essentially like any other in most respects. My calendar is quite full. A Vulcan High Council vote in the early morning. Several sub-committee meetings to follow. The Vulcan Alliance, the ancient pre-Federation association of Vulcan worlds, colonies and affiliates congressing at mid-day. The Federation ambassador to Vulcan at mid-afternoon, bringing several new planetary representatives to Vulcan, eager for trade agreements which will have to be vetted through the appropriate channels, but the social formalities will be observed. Another Vulcan High Council session and vote in the late afternoon. All interspersed with individual appointments from Council members, clan leaders, and diplomats. The usual day of juggling Vulcan, Vulcan affiliated and Federation concerns.

I have nothing planned for the evening, however. Deliberately so. My wife is expecting a guest.

That is what I tell myself to expect. A guest. Not a son. For with that familial relationship comes obligations. Expectations. Rights on my part. Ones which I know will go unfulfilled, unless Spock has repented of his decision. And given this is meant only to be a visit, that possibility appears remote.

Hence a guest. Much simpler. No expectations beyond basic courtesies.

It is somewhat unusual, however. My wife and I seldom entertain houseguests. There are so many social obligations in the life of a Federation ambassador, that when Amanda and I have a free evening, we prefer to spend it at home. Alone.

And I confess I could wish this evening were to be spent that way as well. I could welcome home a son. A Starfleet officer in training, I would not choose to entertain.

And a son who is in Starfleet? Even the idea is still anathema to me.

That the heir to Surak's clan, one devoted to peace for 5000 years, would stoop not merely to the ways of war, but to join the military of an essentially foreign government, is something I would never have remotely considered possible.

Even after two years I find it difficult to believe, much less accept.

And my constant thought, litany, refrain, when forced to confront the notion, is still…. not **my** son.

My son, who strove so to master the Vulcan disciplines in spite of his mother's heritage and influence, who was sealed to Council as my heir at age three, who received an exemplary Vulcan education, both at my hand and by a host of renowned Vulcan tutors and philosophers in the finest of Vulcan institutes of learning. No, my son would never commit such a heretical act.

Therefore, he is not my son. Cannot be. It is like the story of the changeling in one of Amanda's fairy tales which she bade me read. Of a child, inexplicably switched. How could my child, on the cusp of finishing his education, about to move into adult Vulcan society, make such an inexplicable choice.

No. He is not any son I recognize.

And that being so, there is no particular reason to anticipate anything in relation to this evening's meeting.

So I tell myself, and attempt to dwell fully on my duties. And believe I am doing so credibly, in spite of a mind oddly distracted. Until the Thendaran ambassador to Vulcan draws back from our meeting table and says, "Sarek, you haven't heard a word I've said, have you?"

I look at him and realize he is quite correct. I have heard, automatically recording what he has said, but have been inattentive, for all of that. And wonder if my uncharacteristic behavior has been as obvious to all my other colleagues. Vulcans would not make such a personal comment. Most humans or other beings would consider such a remark offensive, and would not risk it. Apart from Amanda, only Regan of Thendara, humanoid if not a Terran, a member of the old Vulcan alliance and a long term associate and colleague, would have the audacity to tell me so. "My thoughts were momentarily elsewhere."

"That's unlike you."

I say nothing, and Regan studies me. "Spock is coming home today, isn't he? Amanda said something to Linnea."

I sit up, and fix him with a disapproving stare. "To return to your points--"

"Sarek. Forget that." He pushed aside the legislation that we had been working on for several meetings, as if it were a mere minor annoyance. "Sarek…you are going to be glad that he's coming home, aren't you?"

"Vulcans do not--"

"Sarek, just answer the -- "

"Personal comments are beyond you --"

"Sarek!"

I paused and then considered the human before me. He had a son Spock's age, a son who had spent most of his life living on an alien world and yet his son was as steeped in Thendaran traditions as if he were on the planet proper. How had he managed it? "I would welcome my son home. This….is not my son."

Regan sat back. "Well. I've known Spock his whole life. He always seemed …a perfect Vulcan to me. Maybe too much so. Does this one transgression cancel out all that?"

I debated several answers, then said, "Yes."

His lungs filled and he let out the long breath. "I should know better than to try and convince you otherwise if your mind is made up. But…even if he's not your son, what if he's Amanda's?"

"Excuse me?"

"Amanda had talked to my wife, years ago, about possibly adopting children, even human children. I was always a bit surprised when you two didn't, after she…well, what if you did? And what if this were that child?"

"'What if' is not a game Vulcans play. Spock had obligations, and he has betrayed them."

"He's betrayed you." He let the remark sink in, though I strove not to react. "This is personal Sarek. I've seen you deal with all sorts of crises without turning a hair. But they weren't personal. That's why you're having so much trouble dealing with this."

"Vulcans…do not deal with personal betrayal well."

Regan eyed me and lowered his gaze again. "Sarek…do you think this is likely to …bring on your past illness?"

Only a human would dare to speak of such things. Even Amanda didn't. "That was biological."

"It had a catalyst."

"I am in control." Regan said nothing, and I brought myself to explain further. "The situation is not unprecedented, in Vulcan history. The heir to a clan is a powerful hostage. Wars have been fought over less. Had his mother and grandmother, not aligned themselves against it, I would have gone to battle, even couched in peaceful terms, and Starfleet and the Federation soon would have found it expedient to release him. But I cannot so engage, and my son is lost to me. So I endeavor to forget him. My Vulcan disciplines would even allow for it. But his mother is neither Vulcan nor disciplined in that way and she certainly is not willing to forget him. Or allow me to. That is the problem."

"He's not a hostage."

"That makes his a true transgression. The situation worse, not better."

"He's just a kid, Sarek. A little mixed up, perhaps, but his heart is good."

"His heart is not the issue."

"I'm sure he loves you. Both of you."

"That would be unVulcan in him."

"What if he is unVulcan? What if you were wrong? All your training, all your indoctrination to the Vulcan way, it failed. Isn't he still yours?"

"My failure?"

"Your **son**."

I tried to consider it. "But that situation did not occur. He did not fail. He passed…every test that would be put of a full Vulcan. Passed, and excelled in most cases."

"Except the final one. To live as an adult on your world. In your culture."

"There was no logical reason why Spock could not have taken up his duties at the Science Academy and fulfilled the expectations of his long ago choice to be Vulcan."

"That's just the point, Sarek."

"I do not understand."

"No **logical** reason. What if his reasons weren't logical? What if that was why he couldn't tell you? Are you going to damm him for being Amanda's child as well as yours? Doesn't the fact that he succeeded so well at being your child for eighteen years make this one transgression acceptable?"

"Starfleet is not a transgression. It is an abomination. He could not have chosen anything--"

"That would gall you more?"

I refused to answer that.

"Maybe that was the point," Regan said thoughtfully. "You never know. Kids…they can think up the strangest things. Maybe he needs to know you'd love him, even if he'd do the very thing you'd find most exceptional."

"Vulcans do not love." I said it automatically, but Regan's statement had caught my attention in spite of the emotional misconception humans always assign to Vulcan behavior. "I did find it …most exceptional." I paused. "Are you saying this was a test?"

"Maybe. Haven't you put him through eighteen years of testing? And he passed them all. Maybe, after all that, he finally had one for you. A doozy. But maybe he felt himself entitled to give it."

I had spent two years trying not to think of Spock. And had been resisting all attempts otherwise. But for a moment, I let myself remember that scene in my office, the night Spock had told me of his plans. But what I chiefly remembered of it was the fury of my own reaction. The emotional response of an adult Vulcan who had lost control. Whether it was a flaw in my own control, a consequence of eighteen years of marriage to an emotional human, the stress of living between two cultures, of raising a child to Vulcan standards within that conflict, or something else, I did not know. I did believe Spock's behavior had been the final catalyst to trigger the full blown syndrome that had nearly taken my own life, and my wife's. It was a time I strove not to recollect, deliberately. But it had also taught me that if I, with full Vulcan abilities could so fail in control then Spock was even more at risk. He should not be with humans. And the worst career for him would be in Starfleet, with its weapons and war-like posturing. Even apart from the terrible transgression against his Vulcan heritage, it was wrong for Spock. "My opinion is unchanged."

"Then can't you at least acknowledge he has the right, after all he has accomplished, to try something on his own, even if it means he has to make his own mistakes?"

"No. I do not acknowledge that."

"Sarek. He's your son."

"In this, he is a stranger to me."

'Then even if he's Amanda's son, he still has some rights."

"If she must see him, I wish she would do it on Terra, which he apparently prefers."

Regan shook his head. "Sarek, I know you. I know how terribly stubborn you can be. But I also know Amanda, and she isn't likely to --" The chine of the communications unit interrupted him, the priority signal, set to urgent, the only reason it would sound during a meeting and not divert to message taking.

"Has the Federation gone to war?" Regan asked, amused at this unprecedented occurrence.

"It is Amanda." I said, reading the origin code. "Excuse me."

"I'll let you go," he said and gathered up his things. "Just think about what we discussed."

I didn't answer, merely signaled to connect. And found myself facing my wife. Obviously not an urgent problem, for she was smiling. Glowing.

"He's home."

For a moment, I say nothing. I know full well when he was due to arrive, the ship, the time. Amanda had talked of little else for weeks. He is only a few hours early, but it is unexpected. I consider what to reply and then simply say, "Indeed."

Amanda doesn't seem to notice, or care. "We're going to have tea in a bit. I could hold it up. Why don't you come home early? We'll wait for you."

"I have meetings. In fact, this call has interrupted one."

She smiles politely, but it is the smile that she uses for an uncooperative press. The smile that has steel behind it. "Cancel the meetings." Her tone is not even remotely a request.

"I cannot."

"Of course you can. The Federation -- or Vulcan for that matter – isn't going to fall apart if you take an afternoon off."

"I will be home as expected, my wife."

"What could possibly be more important than welcoming your son home?"

"My duty."

"This **is** your duty!"

"Perhaps by human standards."

"I don't give a damn if it is by Tellurite standards. Come home!" She said it in Vulcan, in the emphatic mode for emphasis. And, just for a moment, I bridled at my human wife so violating tradition in this way.

"Amanda. Do not speak to me in that tone." There is enough of anger in my voice that she responds in kind.

"Why not? I put up with it from you. **For** you. I bow my head to your orders, and say, 'yes, my husband' and I do it in front of Terrans, who can't remotely understand your traditions and look at me as if I were some sort of Orion slave girl!"

"Amanda." This time, I am careful to say it differently, a gentle reproof.

She catches herself, even as I have modified my own tone. "Sarek…please come home."

"I cannot."

She set her mouth against the frown that threatened, and then drew a determined breath. "There is a very old tale in human history, my husband. Of a king, a **very** **wise** king, who had a son. And the son went far away to travel the world. And the king had need of him and sent out one of his messengers, and asked the son to return."

"And did he?" I asked. Curious in spite of myself. No doubt humans dealt often with unruly children. Perhaps she was going to reveal some unforeseen technique for the same.

"No. Not exactly."

I frowned, slightly. The story not unfolding as expected. "Amanda--"

"Instead the son sent back a message, that said, 'I can't. I have gone too far away from you, and cannot find my way home.'"

Even more displeased, I warned, "Amanda, I fail to see the relevance--"

"Just listen. And the king replied, 'Just turn around and come as far as you can, my son. And I will go the rest of the way. And meet you there.'" She shook her head. "That's all I'm asking, Sarek. Just go as far as you both can, and meet there."

I said nothing for a long moment. Then said, "Vulcan books are supposed to carry all the great wisdom."

She smiled a trace. "Perhaps they do, and you just never looked for this particular kind of help."

"I think this is outside of their scope of their traditions." I paused for a moment, then said, almost regretfully, "And necessarily, of mine."

The smile of steel was back. "So am I, Sarek. Maybe you haven't noticed, but I'm also outside the scope of your tradition. So is he. But there is IDIC, remember."

I shook my head, human style, so that she could not fail to understand me. "That argument is invalid. Your emotional indulgences aside, IDIC is not meant as a license to cover any self-serving behavior."

Even through the viewscreen, I could see her eyes flash. "Now just hold it. Stop right there." Her breath had quickened. "Sarek, can't you see that you're going right back to the very thing that started this conflict? Just because he is exploring something of his human heritage – and as he **is** **both** our child, I'd say that makes him entitled -- does not mean that he is rejecting your disciplines. Or that he is undisciplined, himself."

"In essence, he is."

"That kind of thinking isn't going to help. You've got to try to see things from a different perspective. And try hard."

"Amanda…I cannot."

She sat back, frustrated. "I'm not saying it's going to be easy. I know. I spent a good fifteen years of his life – and mine – watching my child struggle to master disciplines and deny a part of his nature that was as much a part of me as it was of himself. A part I missed in him, a part I wanted him to have. And it was very hard. The hardest thing I ever had to do. Now it's **your** turn for that hard task. Your turn to let go. You had him first, you got him the first eighteen years. But now you have to sit back, and let him do something you don't necessarily agree with, but might be in his best interests. And trust that you won't lose him in the process. I know all about that. I've been there. There's not an argument you can make, logical or otherwise, that I haven't wrestled through and fought with, and forced myself to accept in spite of what I wanted. Don't talk to me now as if **you** are being asked for something too impossible to do. Don't tell me you can't. I've walked that street in hell already. For fifteen years I lived with watching **my** child -- my baby that I – and not you -- went through hell to have, be disciplined from a sweet loving toddler into a perfect little Vulcan automaton who believed that emotions were anathema. And I've loved him and you throughout it all. Don't tell **me** that **you** can't do this now. That it's too hard. That argument just doesn't wash. You're the one with the supposedly disciplined controls."

"There is one difference. You yourself accepted that Spock would be raised Vulcan."

"I did. Yes, I did. But let's not overlook the fact that I let **you** raise him in what I thought was your image and turned out to be something very different."

"He was my son. Mine to raise and train. That is also traditional."

"You were raised in the traditions. And married a Terran wife."

"As a human, you cannot judge how a child is to be trained in the disciplines."

She drew up at that. "Don't play that card with me, Sarek or refer to my species as if it were some dirty word. I've let you do that in the past, but never again. I'm not outcast now, and I've more than paid my dues in Vulcan society. Don't you dare denigrate my humanity. Or his. He's my son too. And let's not forget, my only child. When I'm gone, you'll still be young enough to take a new wife, raise more children--"

"Amanda--" I said, shocked.

"You **know** that's true. More than true, it's the logical expectation. Whereas Spock is all the child that I will ever have. You can have an heir with some other Vulcan wife. But Spock is the only child you will ever have with **me**. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"None of that justifies violating Vulcan traditions, Amanda. I will not excuse his disobedience in the name of IDIC. Nor will I allow you to justify it. That is a particularly flawed human argument."

"My god you are so **stubborn**. This has nothing at all to do with logic, or tradition, Sarek. You are just punishing him and me for what you consider his disobedience. And when I think what I have put myself and my son through in the name of Vulcan discipline and philosophy -- including IDIC – and then to hear you say what you just did – **I** could take a lirpa to you! And Surak, that great pacifist, himself would say it was justified!"

I felt her anger, her fury, battle against my own controls and shields. Even separated as we were, it moved me, and I drew up, wary, as I felt my own temper flare. "That is quite enough, Amanda."

It was a warning, and she took it as such, though still trembling with the force of her words. As if suddenly ashamed, newly aware, of her outburst, she ducked her head.

I gave myself a moment to resurrect my own control. Never an easy task, particularly from an assault so close inside my own barriers. A bondmate should never broadcast anger, particularly towards the other. In the shared bond between mates, the blurring of barriers, that loss of control can trigger the resulting failure of control in the other person. That is both the advantage and the danger of a bond. Joy and pleasure are enhanced, sorrow shared, and anger can escalate. With dangerous results. I could not allow that to happen. Control was something I must master, in the face of whatever might ensue. After twenty years of marriage to a human wife, who had a considerable temper of her own, it should come reflexively.

It did not help that in some respects I shared her anger. Both at this situation and its instigators as well as at myself. I wished my wife had not charged Spock to come home for this visit. I wished Spock had never left. But I was also displeased with myself, that after two years I found myself no less intolerant, no more able to handle the situation. There was a part of me that could not let go of the traditions and expectations practiced by Vulcans through millennia. Not even for my much beloved wife. Or my only son. Like Amanda, I had my own set of grievances. If seldom expressed, there were no less keenly felt, for all my control. Perhaps if I did express them, they might not rankle so within me, but that was a thought unworthy of a Vulcan. Control, the Vulcan way, was what I expected, both of my son and of myself. If that very expectation left me ill-prepared to adequately deal with this sort of transgression, than so be it. I could not change my nature.

That was what I found so unconscionable in Spock. Had he been less obviously Vulcan, had he eschewed the Vulcan way from childhood on, or had he waited until he was an adult, of accepted age, judged worthy then of choosing when to break Tradition, his actions would have been less of a betrayal to my sensibilities. But to have mastered all the ways of our people, fully accepted the decision to embrace Vulcan philosophy, been raised and sealed as an heir, with all the implications and expectations thereof, and then reject his duties at the very age when he was able to begin assuming some of them made it impossible for me to condone his behavior. Regardless of how Amanda had said that rebellion was normal at this age in a Terran child, as a Vulcan he was of an age when he should still be accepting of my council. His rejection of that was too much like a rejection of everything Vulcan, his traditions, his people, his education. And me. Too much, even for me, versed as I was in dealing with Amanda's unVulcan behavior, to accept.

Amanda was first to break the mutual silence. "I'm sorry, Sarek. That's such old history. And I, particularly, wanted to get past that during this visit. But if you resurrect it, I don't see how I can't. It's as much…as much a challenge, to me, as my behavior, sometimes, is to you. I'm still…very angry about it. As you can see. So, please, please try not to. We've come so far. It's just a little way farther, now."

I eyed her. I too had thought we had gotten past that, the contention that had periodically arisen in our marriage. Now I realized it had largely left when Spock had left, when we had ceased to discuss him. And here it was, risen again, with even this brief return. "I am trying nothing, my wife. Except to fulfill my daily schedule, as planned."

"Damn your schedule! Sarek, I'm not asking for much. I never do. But he's come all this way. Just, please, please come home now!"

I drew a breath. "I will come home," I said. "When my duties for the day have finished. As a Vulcan, he could expect nothing less."

"As your human wife, **I** expect something more."

"That far, I will not come, my wife," I said. "Nor should you expect it. Nor would he, if he has retained any sense of Vulcan duty and discipline. I will see you this evening." I reached for the connection.

"Sarek--"

I cut the transmission. And took a moment to order myself. I was …relieved…that it took only a moment to reestablish my controls. But I was well aware that my wife didn't share those abilities. And based on past history, she would not be pleased to have been so abruptly cut off, on top of this contentious discussion. Indeed, to put it in one of her human phrases, there might very well be "hell to pay" upon my return home this evening.

But I was resolute. And sure that I was right. As the sole Vulcan in my Vulcan family, I would manifest the proper behavior that Spock should emulate. I could not excuse his transgressions; I would certainly not emulate his own irresponsibility. A duty was a duty, and must come first.

And if my human wife refused to accept that, and took it amiss, then hell would have to be paid.

_To be continued…._


	5. Chapter 5

**The Visit**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 5**

_Spock's tale_

My mother left me, and I was left facing myself. A Vulcan in a Starfleet cadet uniform. I had become used to that image of myself in Starfleet Academy, where everyone wore uniform. Indeed, the sameness of it lent a certain welcome respite to a lone Vulcan standing out in so many other ways from his fellow classmates. But here in this ancient familial home, where Surak once had trod, I could understand why the sight had given my mother pause. Perhaps it was just as well that Sarek had not been here to greet me when I arrived.

I turned from that dangerously emotion-laden thought, and moved to shift my clothes, trying not to read any more into the act than that, and not a removal of all things Starfleet. Vulcan clothes **were** more practical on Vulcan. There was no official reason why I had to wear uniform now that I was on leave. And there was no need, as my mother would put it, to rub my father's nose in my choice of Starfleet. Our next meeting would be difficult enough.

I put on a desert sandsuit, for I hoped to walk on the Forge before sunset. My fingers brushed and lingered over a formal clan tunic, embroidered with our clan shield, and the insignia marking me as heir. It fit still. I would be expected to wear it when I met with T'Pau, for I was still heir in fact. Though it would take all my control to wear it, unphased, before Sarek, even though I had the legal right. Perhaps mother was correct. It was right to come home and try to resolve this rift with Sarek, unVulcan in both of us to let it go on. Short of resigning from Starfleet, I vowed to do everything in my abilities during this visit to settle this situation. And with such a legendary father, renowned in the Federation for peace and logical negotiations, and my own willingness, surely we could reach a reasonable accord. That thought gave me peace and strength as I quickly cleaned up, changed clothes, and went down to share a meal with my mother.

But peace vanished as soon as I walked out onto the terrace. I knew immediately, before I sat down at the tea table, that there had been a shift in my mother's mood. For when my mother is happy, she glows. When she is not, even though she might smile or laugh or in other respects appear unchanged in her outright mannerisms to the press or the public, there is a difference to those that know her well. It somewhat surprised me that I could class myself in that vein, so long as I had been gone. But I knew now that in the brief interval between her leaving me and my arriving for tea, that she had had words with my father. Not pleasant ones. And something within me tensed accordingly.

But she smiled at me in genuine welcome, and what I recognized from two years of living on Terra as love. "How glad I am to have you home," she said, pouring me tea with a hand deceptively steady. As if nothing had happened in my brief absence. She did not speak of waiting for Sarek to attend us. But I knew better now, than to ask. And she offered no explanation.

I lowered my eyes, and thought instead how wrong it was of me to come and cause these problems between my parents. Well I knew that they seldom argued about anything except myself. It all came back to me as clearly as if I had never been away.

And part of me felt certain that if I truly…cared… for my mother, even for both my parents, I should leave again. Very soon. Why should I remain to cause a rift in my family? It was wrong to be a source of contention, and a particularly terrible Vulcan crime to cause a rift between bondmates. My father needed my mother. I only loved her and that never even expressed. Which of us had more of a right to her attention was no contest.

But I had barely let the thought cross my mind when I felt her hand come over mine – a very highly improper gesture, even between family. And well she knew it. My glance flew up to meet her too perceptive gaze.

"No," was all she said.

I slid my hand out from under hers, repressing the urge to shiver. To get up. To flee even now.

"Oh, stay and fight," she said, with a small laugh, her eyes dancing with amusement. "I do."

"You shouldn't have to."

"No, I shouldn't." She smiled ruefully. "But it does seem to be my lot in life." She tasted her tea.

I drew a breath. I had forgotten, somewhat, how game she was. She was only forty, not even middle aged by human standards, her complexion unmarred by Vulcan's harsh climate, her hair still a gleaming gold, now braided as was proper before a grown son, and secured in a thick tail that hung casually over her shoulder. She was dressed in a very pretty blue gown that matched her eyes, probably chosen with the idea that she'd be sharing this meal with both husband and son. I thought it was a shame that Sarek wasn't here to see it. But her pretty, even gentle looks, belied her deep core of strength. And more than strength - assertiveness. Even as a young child, I'd been always amazed at how she could challenge my father when everyone else on Vulcan, and even in the Federation, always yielded to him. Much of my life I had considered myself wanting in that regard in comparison to her. But I offered my own excuse for that. "Vulcans eschew violence."

"Did Starfleet teach you nothing in that vein?" she asked, still teasing.

"They have tried."

She smiled in a way that I also long remembered. A trace ironic, and she lifted her chin a bit in unconscious challenge, her blue eyes dancing. "Try your tea. It's a blend of Vulcan and Terran varieties that goes very well together. And seems appropriate in this situation."

I sipped it. "It's very good. I have missed Vulcan teas on Terra."

"I have sent you C.A.R.E. packages."

"Like everything else," I said lightly, "meals are very regimented in Starfleet. I seldom have time to indulge in making tea privately for myself."

We both sipped tea for a moment. Then my mother ventured. "Vulcan philosophy is very tenacious, isn't it? Even far away in Starfleet."

"Not only the philosophy."

She smiled in acknowledgement of what was not being said in words. "Still, we never know where our courage is coming from, do we?" she remarked obliquely. To any casual listener the words were very much non-sequitur. But to either of us… She smiled again, this time with warmth. "Try T'Rueth's shortbread. It's a favorite of your father's. She's been cooking and baking for days, all those things I told her were your favorites, in anticipation of your homecoming. And while I **did** try to tell her that you actually don't like sweets -- you still don't, do you? You haven't come home from school with a yen for penny candy?"

I raised an amused brow. "No."

"At least I know you that well. Anyway, she'll be horribly offended, Vulcan or not, if you don't at least try them."

I took up one of the confections, which did go very well with the tea. I made the appropriate comments, though I think my mother was listening more to the sound of my voice than my compliments on her table. She was clearly not interested herself in the elaborate and varied tea T'Rueth had prepared, barely tasting a thing, instead feasting her eyes on me. Her next words proved prophetic in that regard.

Setting down her cup, she sat back, as if the better to view me in my entirety, and smiled in anticipation. Her blue eyes sparkled. "Now. Tell me about Starfleet. And Terra, too, of course. It has been too long since I've been there. What did you think of it all?"

What does one tell one's mother in a situation like this? I knew, from the first eighteen years of living as her child, how to parse my words. To tell the truths that were safe to tell, that she would want to hear. I wasn't ready, didn't really know enough of myself, even after two years on Terra, to know how to parse all my experiences. I was still evaluating them. Or know how to describe them. I crumbled a shortbread between my fingers, the better to make it appear consumed, and took another sip of tea while I ordered my thoughts.

Some things I could tell. I had come to appreciate Terra's unique beauty, even if I could never imagine myself fully comfortable there. I spoke of that, of the ever changing cloud cover that filled Terra's skies with a show unlike anything on Vulcan, the drenching winter rains, the restless, powerful seas, the incredibly prolific vegetation, all so foreign to a Vulcan. Of riding horses on a California beach and watching the sea creatures in the waves. I told what I could of the classified computer work for a Federation funded lab that I had Starfleet leave to work on, part of my tuition, since I was too well advanced for most of the Academy science courses. Since I had also been approached by a group searching for a competent Vulcan lyrist, I spoke more freely, since that was unclassified, of the strange culture of studio musicians I had become part of, which at first had seemed closed and even dissipated at times. Some of them had shared a very strange philosophy, even Vulcan in some respects, though at odds with Starfleet. But in spite of that, they had made a place for me. If the studio were unbooked after the session had finished, the musicians would often stay and "jam" well into the night, and I had been invited to join some of those sessions. I did not tell her that in spite of how odd I had found their culture, I had also seen how very easily I could fit into this accepting, avant-garde group. I had begun teaching several of them the Vulcan lyre and in return, they had taught me something of their instruments. I had been required to join a musician's union, and had been paid a very reasonable fee for the work. While that life was something I would never consider as a profession, if StarFleet or Vulcan vanished, and science lost its hold on me, here was also a place.

She listened to my stories with a bemused smile, as if was something she had all heard before, even though much of this I had never related previously. When I realized that what I was telling her she had found wanting, that she was, in fact, listening for something I wasn't saying, I paused, waiting for her judgment.

She merely smiled again and said, almost diffidently, "But you know, you aren't telling me anything of Starfleet."

"I do message you regarding Starfleet," I replied, a trace offended. "I have told you much of that already."

"Yes. I appreciate your messages," she said, a bit remotely.

Now I was waiting for something she wasn't saying. "But?"

My mother shrugged, a slight shift of her slender shoulders. "You tell me of events. Your classes, your teachers, your fellow students. You don't really tell me how you feel about any of it. I realize it's difficult, even perhaps a little compromising to your eyes, to put that sort of thing in a recording. But you're home now, speaking to me directly. And we're alone. I don't just want to know what you've been doing. I want to know how you feel. Are you really happy in Starfleet?"

I bridled a little at that. "Mother, I **don't** feel. Happiness is a human emotion."

"Oh, nonsense. Don't prate the party line to me. Spock, you've been on Earth now two years. You've mastered the people, the culture – myriad cultures, for all that – everything from a Starfleet cadet assembly to Federation high security computer work, to a counterculture jam session, no doubt complete with girls and euphorics – something you've interestingly carefully omitted from your expurgated tales --"

I drew up a little at that. Trust her to have perceived that. "I do not indulge in mood altering chemicals, even if such would have any affect on a Vulcan metabolism. And as for girls, Mother you know well that I am already bonded."

Amanda shook her head. "Yes, worse luck. Still, I never thought my teenage child would be telling me his friends do it, but not **him**. That's a particularly human parental experience I somehow never expected to have."

"Are you questioning my veracity?" I asked sharply.

"Don't get all Vulcan haughty with me. You may not have seen me for two years, but I'm your mother, not some stranger. No, not precisely your veracity. But I've discovered you have gotten surprisingly good at the very human adolescent trait of telling me what you want me to hear – slanting a tale. What humans call lying by omission."

I drew up at that, nearly insulted, but she just smiled.

"I can just imagine what goes on at those "jam" sessions other than music. And don't look so disapproving. I don't mean any slur on your honor."

I strove to order my expression and body language, for I had taken some offense. After two years on my own, I found it difficult to accept her right to review or sanction my activities. It was hard for me to get used to her unique teasing ways. Sarek, the instructors at the Academy, never teased.

Though she was correct. Much went on in that group that I didn't understand, or choose to participate in. Fortunately, what my mother would call a 'live and let live' attitude of acceptance prevailed among those individuals – particularly when influenced by euphorics. They had allowed me to be part of their group, without my necessarily indulging in all their excesses. "What are you questioning then?"

"You're really doing very well on Earth, in areas that surprise even me. Which only leaves me more puzzled."

"You are puzzled because I'm acclimating?"

"No. Puzzled as to where Starfleet fits in all this. That is what you're not telling me. What you've left conveniently out. I could see the attraction of Starfleet for you before that acclimation – in spite of its military background, it was structured, ordered, and to a certain extent – safe. You could go there and it would just…swallow you up and keep you. You only had to obey orders. Do what you were told. Not that very different from your first eighteen years on Vulcan. It must have been very comforting. It let you experience a least a subset of Terran culture with a very secure safety net."

I drew a breath at that unwelcome comparison, even as I realized she was perceptively right in some respects, but she went on before I could speak.

"But look how well you are doing **now**. You have scientific work outside of Starfleet. You have friends, and activities – even some I find a little questionable. You have found a real footing on Terra. You've stayed a Vulcan, and yet still assimilated. It's a remarkable accomplishment. Oh, you're still a little raw around the edges, but Rome wasn't built in a day. For you, raised so strictly as a Vulcan child, you've done far better than I could have imagined, even though I hoped. You don't need Starfleet to keep you, not now. And that being so, I don't see how Starfleet's attractions or advantages can reasonably compare with the other alternatives you could embrace. You could transfer to any other prestigious university and do well. And any of them would be happy – ecstatic -- to have a student with your background."

"Mother, you seem to have forgotten that I have made a commitment to Starfleet."

She shrugged, as if dismissing that. "You're so young, particularly for a Vulcan. I can't see how it could be necessarily binding. Even if it proved to be, with your father's help-"

I drew back a little, in surprise and near shock. "Is that why you brought me home? To convince me to leave Starfleet? To aide Sarek in accomplishing what he failed to do before?"

She shook her head, exasperated. "I didn't bring you home. You came home of your own free will," she tilted her head. "Not that it isn't about time too. And I'm not trying to get you to leave Starfleet. I simply am pointing out that you've been two years on Terra, and you've managed much better than even I expected. Haven't you succeeded in much of what you originally set out to accomplish? You've gotten out from under your father's thumb. You've proved you can succeed on your own. Surely you're no longer feeling that crushing need to grab any lifeboat, however unsuited, just to experience a little freedom. While Starfleet served you well in giving you that out, if you stay on, continue with your training, accept a commission, it has undeniable disadvantages."

"I'm content in Starfleet."

"No. You are content in Starfleet Academy. Have you truly considered that there's a big difference between the Academy and actual Starfleet service? It's a military organization. You know how Vulcans regard overt warfare."

"Starship exploration is **not** in the militaristic arm of Starfleet, Mother. Yes, there are other branches of Starfleet. There are those who see it primarily as a means of waging war, and a career that will bring them – that some actually hope will bring them -- battles and advancement in victory. I have encountered individuals with those goals, and I will not deny I find their mindset unpleasant. But **my** career path is different – I am seeking a position as a science officer on a Starship in deep space exploration – not a battle cruiser patrolling the blockade on the human side of the Neutral Zone. And there are just as many who enter Starfleet for exploration as for its military duties."

"But Starfleet Academy and Starfleet encompasses both tasks. And I'm sure your education is more encompassing than the narrow goal you've defined. Isn't there a proving period on smaller ships before you'd even be given such a position, on battle cruisers perhaps?"

"I plan to serve on a Starship."

She shook her head. "There are only twelve. Is that a realistic goal?"

"I expect to get the posting I have requested," I said stiffly.

"I imagine you'll serve on light cruisers, battlecruisers first. Let's speak plainly about what you omit when you talk about your hopes for a future career. You are taking command training. That means training for war, military strategy and weapons. And you're not failing, are you? You're doing very well. But you are a Vulcan. Logic aside, scratch that veneer of civilization too deeply and beneath it is a Vulcan warrior – and you know how dangerous loss of control can be for Vulcans. Your own history proves-- "

"I have two histories," I said, more sharply than I intended.

She stopped at that.

I caught myself and spoke more reasonably. "I would have thought at least you would remember that. Two histories."

"Well, don't count too much on that," she said, raising an ironic brow. "Terran history has its own failures in that regard."

"I believe that I can bring something to Starfleet and to Command of the solution to that conflict. I am of Vulcan, bred to peace. With a full knowledge of what war can wrought."

Amanda shook her head, her lips pursed. "Oh, Spock, forgive me. I don't mean to be insulting. But you're a child. When you make such…naïve…pronouncements, I can't help but speak. Vulcan has been at peace for 5000 years. You have **no** idea what war – real war -- means. It means death and destruction, often on a horrific scale. In the Federation it means more than just stun phasers and blockades. It means killing people. Are you prepared to face off at an enemy vessel – even to **call** another sentient creature by the name of enemy – you who've been raised to Vulcan standards – and then fire killing force weapons on them to blow them out of the sky? That's the profession – the duties – to which you are presently setting your goals."

I looked at my mother. I had indeed not told her everything. But with a full two years of command training behind me, of detailed education on all the threats faced by the Federation on so many fronts, I looked at my pretty, privileged mother, sitting in her elaborate garden before a table of edible luxuries, attended by devoted servants, dressed in a costly gown, every stitch of which looked hand-set and hand-embroidered, living on peaceful Vulcan for two decades, sheltered even there by a fully armed guard, and high Federation level security, whether she chose to acknowledge or countenance the need for that security or not-- and I found her naïve. She was sheltered even further by my father, who even for no better reason than that he was Vulcan and his life was tied to hers, would guard her with his life and his considerable power from any unnecessary risk. I did not wish to insult her. But paying her in kind, I told her my plain, my _unomitted_ truth. "I think, my mother, that after two years in Starfleet, being trained in the considerable dangers that face the Federation, and yes, a Vulcan heritage that includes a far more violent warrior past than your own, that I understand war far better than you can."

She flushed at that and sat up. "You forget that at least half my career, however unacknowledged, is helping your father, who has spent his whole adult life striving throughout the Federation to keep the peace. And to keep it with words, not with weapons. He's done an exceptional job of it too, and you have no idea some of the trying and dangerous conditions wherein we've worked. No one has a better or more deserved reputation than your father."

"I'm aware of these facts," I said stiffly, though I had momentarily forgotten this other side to my chameleon mother. I, of course, had been in school while my parents took these dangerous trips. I knew very little of that part of my parent's work.

"So, how can you, as his son, abandon his work, in effect denigrate his accomplishments? Not even attempt to try his methods, discard them in advance for the weapons that all Vulcans have sworn to eschew?"

"I don't denigrate it."

"By choosing Starfleet over his path for you, you do." She caught herself and sat back again, poured herself and me more tea with a hand that was no longer quite as steady, as she strove to regain her own control. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to criticize you, Spock. I want to support you. But I confess I cannot and do not understand how the child I knew can want the career you now profess to undertake."

I thought of some of the horrors I'd been shown, the briefings, the very real dangers with which my Starfleet Command training had acquainted me. I had led a sheltered life as a privileged Vulcan child, sheltered even more than my mother from these horrors. When I first entered Starfleet Academy, I'd been naïve, ignorant of much these threats. But now, I didn't see myself how I could peacefully go back to life as an ignorant citizen, lost in a lab and trivial concerns of mere research, trusting in others to keep Vulcan and the Federation safe. Even my father could not hold back the Klingons with words. The Romulans perhaps. They were wary of Vulcans, having been beaten too soundly millennia before and they were of our blood, and we understood each other. But not the Klingons or the myriad others that threatened the Federation. "Words aren't always enough, Mother. I hope that never happens to you, or to Vulcan. But there are real threats in the universe, Mother. Not all can be staved off with diplomacy."

"Oh, don't tell me that. I have this argument on the **opposite** side with your father from time to time. But it is always best to try diplomacy first, before weapons. And much of the time, war **can** be staved off with diplomacy. The question is, do you want to be on the side that uses words, or that uses weapons? Someone who prevents a war can be every bit as much or more of a hero than someone who fights it. Your father has done that more than once."

She was hitting too hard to some of my own concerns, before I had fully resolved them in my own mind.

"I don't understand why you **are** taking his argument now, against me. I thought you – if not approved of my choice – at least respected my right to take it."

"I'm not taking his argument. I leave your father to fight his own battles. Some day, if you two attempt to reconcile, I'm sure you'll have to slug this out with him. I'm asking you for my own reasons. I want to understand."

"I don't understand you. It seems you have changed your views. Once you supported my desire to attend Starfleet."

My mother bit her lip, something she did in argument, when particularly torn. "No. You give me too much credit. I understood that you needed to get away, to grow up and become your own person. You needed that, and I wanted to help you. You deserved that much from me. And Starfleet, well, I couldn't entirely approve, but I could see that it was convenient for you. Much more so than another school, it became a surrogate parent for you, with rules and regulations and all the things you'd had on Vulcan, just translated into Terran standard. I understood the attraction it had for you."

I was shocked at her assumption. "That was not what attracted me."

"At least in part, I think it was. What I am saying, is that I understood you needed a vehicle, and Starfleet served a useful purpose. But there's a difference, Spock, between getting a more varied education, learning something more of the Federation and other beings, attending a Terran school, even a military school and actually accepting their commission at the end. Have you seriously considered what that final step means?"

I was astounded that she thought me so shortsighted. "Of course I have."

"No one would blame or think less of you if you reconsidered. Part of the leave Starfleet grants at this time is to give you time to consider that, before you take your field training."

"I have no intentions of reconsidering," I said stiffly. "I wonder that you would expect me to."

"Oh, do you really?" She sat back, her mouth set. "Forgive me for noticing the incongruity that my child, whom I raised without a smile or a hug lest he be contaminated by human values, is now planning for a military career where he's perfectly content to kill people. So long as he doesn't smile in between battles, I take it?"

I nearly flushed at that too perspective view. "That is unfair. There is nothing incongruous in my plans. I am Vulcan in my behavior, even if not entirely in my biology. I go, I always intended to go as a Vulcan to Starfleet. I have not changed in that intention. As for your comments as regard force, Starfleet uses it only as a measure of last resort. While I am not entirely sanguine in that use, I accept that it is part of Starfleet's strategy and will be used if and when my superior officers deem necessary. It would be used even were I not in Starfleet. My presence has no bearing on that."

"That's the propaganda, yes. But when you are that officer, **you** will be required to make that decision. Have you thought it through to that extent?"

"Then I will make the logical choice, based upon all my training and experience. I don't intend to allow my emotions to guide me, either in personal or in command decisions. I will do what I must. The two are not incongruous." I paused, regaining my temper. "Mother, usually I can follow your logic, after a fashion, but now I am finding your position incomprehensible."

She drew a breath in turn. "Well, I won't deny that my emotions are guiding me a little. I am your mother. I never intended to blitz you the moment you walked in the door. Still, I've missed you and I'm just realizing how much, now that I have you home again. It was one thing to have my child on Earth, safe in San Francisco. You were even safer in Star Fleet than you'd have been living on some other college campus. But now that's nearly over. I confess I'm finding it much harder to deal with the reality of what it means if you actually do accept a commission and leave on a deep space mission. Those missions are dangerous."

"Quite. I've accepted the danger."

"Well, I haven't!" She looked at me, pleadingly. "Spock. You have a responsibility to your family. To your clan. To Vulcan. Can't you just – if you **have** to leave Vulcan again, can't you just transfer to some Terran university? I don't understand why you have to stay in Starfleet now."

I found this line of argument, from her, incredible myself, and was unprepared to be facing this examination from the mother who had supported me throughout this endeavor. I said, unfortunately, the first thing that occurred to me. "I have a responsibility to Starfleet. My training -- the training of any cadet – is expensive."

"Expensive?" Her wide-eyed incredulity at this would have, were I not a Vulcan, have made me blush. "Is that what you're worried about? That's no reason to stay in Starfleet. Expensive compared to fifteen years of premier Vulcan education? Expensive compared to two doctorates at the VSA? What about the sheer expense – and risk – of your very existence that your father – and I – took just to ensure your birth?"

"You can't hold me responsible for that," I said.

"No, of course not. That was unfair of me. But I'm trying to put things in perspective for you – something adolescents can find difficult. **Don't** feel trapped into accepting a commission because Star Fleet housed and schooled you for a couple of years at an inconvenient time of your life when you were trying to find your way. We will **compensate** Starfleet for your tuition and board."

My eyes narrowed at that peremptory assumption. "I am an adolescent, true. But that doesn't make it a given that my decisions are flawed, or any less resolute. I made the choice to enter Star Fleet as an adult. I have accepted their training, and I will meet my obligations in turn. I don't want my parents – and I don't think you should include Sarek in your statements so blithely, given he has disowned me – preventing me from meeting them any more than I wished for your interference when I originally enrolled."

Her blue eyes flashed in turn and she spoke more sharply than I had heard her speak to me in years. "My interference just happened to help get you enrolled! Or at least, stay enrolled! If it wasn't for me, your father would never have let you off the planet!"

"Mother…" I paused and after a moment, saw her catch herself. Her shoulders dropped as she mastered her emotions, even as I strove to control mine. "I **do** understand that. I appreciate everything you have done to help me in my goals. I left you in an untenable position as regards my father, though I never intended to cause discord between you."

"You have no idea, my son," she said dryly, and sitting back, sipped her tea.

"I'm sure Sarek was displeased with you for taking my side, so to speak. What I don't understand is why did you let me leave at all, then, if you weren't committed to letting me make my own choices now?"

"Oh," Amanda twisted in frustration. "I am so tired of being caught between you two. And for the record, I am not trying to keep you from that. As long as they **are** your goals. I just don't want you to risk your life, or even to find yourself in some uncompromising position, forced to do acts you'd otherwise find unconscionable, because you "ran away to sea' to get away from an unpleasant situation at home. Or ran away to find something more than you could find on Vulcan. I don't want you to stay there out of some misplaced sense of responsibility or loyalty, just because you ended up there."

I shook my head, a Terran contamination, but I was mystified. "How can you think so little of my motivations?"

She gave me an exasperated look. "You forget, that I've seen you do this before. When you committed to being raised Vulcan. All those years, you couldn't be Vulcan enough. Couldn't work hard enough, master enough disciplines, be unemotional enough. Holding yourself to higher standards than your father ever set even for himself. And then you broke with all his expectations and plans for you, threw over the traces, and did this sudden, unexpected, 180 degree turn to Starfleet. Do you think I don't recognize the same signs again? I don't want you to make an equally fervent commitment to Starfleet, out of some misplaced sense of responsibility, the way you did to the Vulcan Way, and then find it as unbearable as your first choice, but harder to leave and more dangerous to survive. If I didn't spare you the first agony, I want to spare you the second. I'm your mother. It's my job."

But I was too shocked at her interpretation to take all her words in, still struck by her first analysis. "I don't believe I have abandoned the Vulcan Way."

"Starfleet isn't exactly on its straight and narrow path. Spock, Starfleet is not your family," she pleaded. "It won't love you back. Don't give your loyalty, the love I know you have, to a sterile military organization. That's even more of a travesty than giving it to Vulcan tradition. At least there you had a place."

"I am not in Starfleet looking for love. And your analysis is flawed. My interest in Starfleet wasn't sudden. I'd been considering it some years. "

"Call it acceptance then."

"Very well, then. Even if I acknowledge some truth in your analysis, I do believe that I **have** found acceptance, and even approval, in Starfleet. Certainly more than I have found on Vulcan. Or, based on my experiences, from Sarek."

"You didn't try to make peace with your father. You threw down your gauntlet at him and walked out. And you couldn't have done anything to gall him more. Don't think I don't know that. Are you sure there wasn't some revenge, in going to Starfleet? Well I know how supposedly logical Vulcans can twist the knife."

"That was never my intention." I gave her a level look. "I had thought however, I at least had some measure of acceptance from you. I discover that is not now the case."

Amanda drew herself up. "That's not true. I am trying to help, however you regard it. Now that you're home again, I want you to seriously reevaluate Starfleet as opposed, not just to Vulcan, but the myriad other lives you could lead. I want you to reexamine why you entered it. And I do want you to make peace with your father. If you want to do that, you have to be able to discuss this with him logically. Think about it. Please. Make this time at home work for you."

I drew a deep breath, ordering my own emotions. "Very well."

"As for Starfleet, I just want to be sure that you **do** want it. That if you must take a commission, you do it for the right reasons. Not because of some sense of obligation. You realize that once you're deployed on a deep space mission, you are really committed. You won't be able to so easily throw up the traces and come home."

"I'm prepared for that. And there was nothing easy about my initial decision either."

"No, there wasn't. But so far, you haven't given me anything I consider reason enough to risk your life in Starfleet."

"What would you consider the right reasons?"

Amanda sighed. "Truthfully? None I can think of. But not that you want a little freedom and want to run away to sea. You can have that in any number of other ways. Not that you are looking for an acceptance I think you have already proven you have found outside of Starfleet."

"You have forgotten that I am primarily interested in science. Field exploration, not science in a lab. There is no place better than Starfleet for that."

"Hmm. I wonder. The universe is a big place, my son, and I suspect there's a long tedious trek between true marvels. You might find it very boring."

"You had previously said it would be very dangerous."

"I expect it will be both. Months of boring ship routine, sandwiched between brief interludes where things do get interesting, but probably also very lethal."

"Nevertheless, it is what I want. I want to study in the field, Mother. On a starship, not in a lab. I have defied my father, suffered his disinheritance, left my home, lived in an alien culture, suffered many discomforts and worked extremely hard for two years to prepare for this opportunity. Surely by all I have done, and all I have given up to obtain it, I have proven my intentions to **anyone's** satisfaction. But proven or not to yours, I am going to take a commission. I **want** a starship." I realized that I had lost some of my emotional control. My composure had slipped. My voice had sharpened, heated, and I was breathing hard. Further I could see that I had so lost control that I had surprised my mother. She was staring in more than a little shock at my emotional pronouncement. I strove to regain my composure, embarrassed and well aware that I had just proven my lack of competence to make any rational life decision, in making such childish, emotional statements with such obvious lack of control. But in one of those contradictory quirks that so defined my life, what would have caused my father to send me back to preKahs Wahn school for basic emotional training, banned from making even the simplest of decisions for myself until I could display even rudimentary Vulcan control, had had the opposite effect on my very human mother.

She sighed, shaking her head, as if acknowledging defeat. "Well. You have convinced me."

I eyed her incredulously, my emotions still not fully back under my command. "I have said nothing different than what I've said before, Mother."

She smiled ruefully. "Perhaps it was the way you said it."

I drew up at that, stung, however rightfully. To be called on that flaw by my human mother particularly hurt. "I apologize for my obvious emotion."

"It's probably my fault. My persistent questioning – when you've barely walked in the door – probably goaded you into it, though please believe me, that it was not my intention. I beg forgiveness in turn." She said the latter, almost absently, in perfectly accented formulaic High Vulcan, a language as obscure as it was difficult to learn, her voice almost without inflection, her face as expressionless as her voice. I remembered that she had to use that language now in Council, since T'Pau's long overdue acceptance of her marriage. My mother was a clan leader now, human though she was.

"Granted," I said, in the same formal language.

She switched from High Vulcan back to English, both expression and inflection washing over her face and voice as if she had momentarily transmuted herself. It was unsettling to me, though she didn't seem to find anything unusual in her chameleon-like behavior. "It's obvious to me now that you aren't acting out of some misplaced sense of duty or obligation, or because you feel having going into Starfleet, you are now trapped into following through with space duty. You do really want it." Her voice held a trace of astonishment, but also of reluctant acceptance. "You have thought it through, all of it, at least as well as you can, at twenty. And you do want it."

I drew a breath again, this time in betraying relief, but strove to order my systems again. "Obviously. I trust I have convinced you that my choice is correct."

"Oh, no. I'm not convinced you've made the right choice for yourself. I'd rather see you do a dozen other things. And I won't pretend to like it. But you have convinced me you're committed. And I'm familiar – only too familiar -- with a Vulcan caught up in that kind of single minded pursuit." She shook her head, shivered a little, even on the Vulcan warm terrace. "I have personal experience with it. I won't even attempt to dissuade you further. I recognize the signs." She sighed, again ruefully. "You are **so** like your father, my son. Couldn't you have inherited at least a little of **my** traits?"

"Perhaps I have. At twenty, you made a particular life-changing commitment of your own."

"Yes. So I did." She seemed quiet now. Thoughtful.

"Nor do I think Father," I realized I'd slipped in giving him the parental title, but my mother didn't seem to have noted the error, "would regard the pursuit of a Starfleet career as in any way emulating him."

"No, worse luck. You are both a little blind in that respect. You realize that the argument you used to sway me will never work with your Father. He won't see the comparisons at all, though I can't blame him for it, he's too close to you. You're going to have to think up something else for him, supposing that you two actually sit down and talk to each other about this."

"I understand that only too well that I must present Sarek with a highly logical argument." I hesitated, and confessed, "I don't understand why emotion convinced you, Mother, even though you are human."

She shook her head and smiled. "You'd have to be human, my son, to appreciate it. Which you most definitely are not."

I wondered at how she could say such, when she had just seen me lose my emotional control. But she seemed not to see that, still shaking her head, regarding me with the same puzzled smile.

"It certainly is a judgment on your father and me, that when you were a child, we so wanted you to be Vulcan, the better to be accepted by your clan and peers. And now it is your Vulcan nature – your father's own nature -- that has led you so determinedly into leaving us. How could we have foreseen any of this? And how could we **not**? If it weren't causing this rift between your father and you, I'd almost find it amusing."

I could not follow her logic and I didn't hesitate to say so. "I don't understand you, Mother. I wonder how my father manages." I was emboldened enough to add, "I still wonder why he married you."

She laughed, a little. "Why? Because he is like you. Or you are just like him. Though both of you are probably too Vulcan to see it. And too stubborn." She sighed. "Be careful, my son. Vulcan passions are more dangerous than human emotions."

I raised my brows, now completely puzzled, but she only shook her head, lost in some private reverie she could or would not explain. After twenty years of living among logical Vulcans, my mother is still utterly and incomprehensibly human.

I drew back a little from her emotion. After having so recently lost my own control, I felt the need to regain it, a strong desire to walk on the Forge, reconnect with my Vulcan roots, before meeting my formidable father. "Mother, if you would excuse me, I feel the need to meditate."

"I understand." She paused, eyeing my sandsuit. "On the Forge?"

"Yes, of course."

"Of course. My Vulcans are a continual trial to me in that respect. Well, please come back well before sunset. There's been a big lematya hanging around very close to the house that's been particularly troublesome lately. The guard haven't yet decided to dart and relocate it, but they're seriously considering that necessity. I don't want to welcome my son home only to lose him to a desert predator."

"I haven't forgotten my desert skills. Besides, Mother, I am a Starfleet cadet. Soon I hope to be exploring on alien worlds. I **can** walk outside the gates of my own home."

"Just remember, at times Vulcan can be equally dangerous. Be careful."

"Yes, of course, Mother." I took my leave of her, and then, with real anticipation, let myself out of the barred gate that walled off the terraced gardens from the desert outside. Following a well known path that led up into the foothills, I could see the pad marks of the lematya my mother had mentioned, a large and no doubt truly formidable beast. But on the same path, I saw marks of another's tracks. My father's booted footsteps in the desert sand. This was also a familiar haunt of his. I drew in the dry air of the Forge, considering those tracks.

In coming home before sunset, I could avoid the first formidable predator. But, ironically, that would bring me right back home into the den of the second. And he was perhaps more daunting than the first. It was an even toss, as Terrans would say, as to which I would choose to avoid. But facing Sarek was a confrontation I could not evade. I had best meditate well, and get myself under firm control, if I were to survive that encounter.

I went on up into the hills, a Starfleet cadet in a Vulcan desert sandsuit, following my father's footsteps. At least on this one path. There were others on which it seemed we were fated to diverge.

13

_To be Continued..._


	6. Chapter 6

**The Visit**

**by**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 6**

_Amanda's story_

While Spock was out on the Forge, the skies clouded up in anticipation of a late afternoon thunderstorm, rare, but not unheard of in the Fall. Then, as if the planet herself were conspiring to keep my two Vulcans apart, an electrical storm broke out.

No Vulcan worth his logic goes sauntering around the desert in one of those – heavy rains turn even the hard packed desert sand into dangerous quagmires. And in the foothills where Spock was, flash floods were common. Anyone who didn't take shelter risked being hit by lightening. These violent storms were the Vulcan equivalent of snow days; even Vulcans battened down during the worst of them.

Having the sense he was born with, my logical son took refuge in a cave when the skies began to darken far in advance of when they should, even before the telling winds began to rise. Knowing better than to cross his mother, he called me to let me know that he would be late. Even with that consideration I was hardly pleased.

"Aren't you risking being out too near sunset?" I asked uneasily, picturing him caught between these two evils and damning my inhospitable adopted planet. "I should come and get you."

"No," Spock said, a bit too forcefully before he collected himself. "I will be perfectly safe in the shelter I've chosen. Flying in violent wind shear conditions in a Vulcan sandstorm is dangerous even for Vulcan pilots."

"I don't like the sound of that," I said, offended. "I have a perfect safety record. I've never had an accident."

"And you will not have one now," Spock said, sounding just like his father. "Sarek would not approve your coming. And I forbid it."

"I don't care what your father thinks. And as for you, I'm still your mother. It's not for you to forbid anything to me. Tell me where you are."

"No," he said stubbornly. "I will not."

"I can always find you anyway," I warned. "I'll triangulate on your communicator." I could too, if I was not very facile at the technique.

"Not if I disable that function," he countered.

"You couldn't," I said. "You wouldn't! Spock!"

"I can and will, to prevent you from coming out in a dangerous storm."

"If it's dangerous to me, it is to you."

"I will be all right, Mother," Spock said, this time with that ultra patient tone in his voice. "Do not be over-emotional. I will be home directly after the storm passes."

"Oh… Remember, you're not in San Francisco anymore. Out here, the resident wildlife **eats** you."

"I have been well trained in desert lore, besides having taken Terran hand-to-hand combat for two years."

"I never heard that being a Starfleet cadet gave anyone immunity from Vulcan wildlife," I said tartly, in response to that. "Don't get too cocky just because you've got that under your belt. And for goodness sake, please be careful. Remember the lematya that I warned you about. Do try not to get eaten, drowned or electrocuted on your first day back."

"I will endeavor to oblige, Mother," Spock said, sounding perfectly calm as he closed the communication. No doubt, like any Vulcan, he was happy as a pig in mire to be trapped out on the Forge. But I took a dim view of it. Thinking to find him anyway, I brought up the computer and tried to triangulate on his signal. But Spock was too quick for me and had made good his threat. I could not trace him. Though perhaps, if Sarek were home, he'd have been able to.

Anxiety over Spock, warranted or not, fueled my frustration with all things Vulcan, the planet, the weather, my son -- and my husband, who hadn't even bothered to call.

The sky was now an ugly mud color. I was gazing at it anxiously when I saw the flash that preceded the force-screens dropping, and then Sarek's flyer appeared in the sky. I let out one slight sigh of relief. With all the local populace battening down, I wouldn't have wanted Sarek to stay holed up in Council Keep to wait out the storm – not with Spock home only for a short while. As he banked the flyer, I saw a gust of wind briefly tilt the vehicle before Sarek counterbalanced. And the storm hadn't even started yet. I knew Spock was right, that I was no match for piloting a flyer in such conditions, but that didn't ease my anxiety with Spock still gone.

Sarek berthed the flyer in the hanger, and as he approached the house, I heard him whistle to his hawk. Wol came winging down from the foothills, to land on his upraised arm. She'd grown quite a bit since her rescue, and her talons fully encircled his forearm to wrap around it. I had forgotten about Wol, but naturally Sarek would not have – though I thought it was a bit much if he came home for her and not for Spock or me. But I had grown fond of her too when she'd rehabbed with us, and didn't want any harm to come to her. While she did very well for herself in our game-rich gardens and nearby foothills, Sarek was right to call her in. She was still a young bird, probably not storm smart. And with her wing injury, she might be compromised in the high winds to come.

"I'm so glad you're home," I said, running up to him.

Only semi-tame, and not terribly used to me, Wol objected to my abrupt motion by back-winging and giving a metallic screech that, so close to his ears, caused Sarek to wince, in spite of all his Vulcan controls.

"I'm sorry," I said to Sarek, for the ringing in his sensitive ears, if not for our previous argument. And then to Wol, "And I'm sorry to you too. You know I don't mean you any harm, you prehistoric chicken."

Even the raptors on Vulcan, like so many other creatures on the planet, are semi-empathic. Wol knew very well I meant her no harm, but she was wild enough that her instincts got the better of her under stress. She let out an almost chicken-like cluck, a sound very much at odds with her six foot wingspan, her comment encompassing reproach for both our failures, and then settled back down again on Sarek's upraised arm. A blast of sand assaulted us, and we hurried inside the garden gate, where the wind was partially shielded and we could breathe a bit easier out of its choking embrace.

"There was no cause to worry," Sarek said with a trace of impatience. "If I could not have made it back before the brunt of the storm, I would have simply stayed in the city."

"Spock is out on the Forge."

"He -- what?" Sarek halted and turned so abruptly that he unbalanced Wol, who squawked and whacked his head with one broad wing in an attempt to stay in balance. He shook his head free of her feathers. "What?"

"Well there was no sign of a storm earlier this afternoon," I defended. "Not even Vulcan weather forecasters are always prescient."

"At this season of the year," Sarek said, his eyes narrowed, "it was not well advised."

"Well, this is the season he's home."

"Indeed," Sarek settled himself and then gave a Vulcan shrug. "If he is out on the Forge, he will take cover." He resumed his pace toward one of the greenhouses where he apparently intended Wol to shelter out the storm.

I followed after him, persistently. "I want you to go and get him."

Sarek paused before the greenhouse he'd chosen. "That is completely illogical."

"If there's time. There must be time. Sarek, I'm worried about him."

"There is no need." He opened the greenhouse door.

"If you came home to take care that a hawk was sheltered from the storm, you can certainly go after your son!"

Sarek closed his eyes briefly and then giving Wol a command, launched her into the greenhouse. A half dozen birds and a litka gorging on fruit within squawked or otherwise took cover. With an air of complacency, Wol settled herself on the branch of an apple tree, and began to preen the sand out of her feathers. Sarek's gaze followed her with approval, for her disinterest meant she was not hungry and had learned her hunting lessons well. Only then did he turn to me. "Where is he?"

"I…I don't know," I faltered. "He didn't say. And he …he's disabled the locator on his communicator."

"He--" His dark eyes flashed. "What folly is this?"

"He wanted to prevent me from coming after him."

Sarek shook his head in Vulcan fashion, only slightly appeased. "In that regard, alone, would I excuse it. The folly of the son would only have been surpassed by the mother, should you have attempted such a rash action."

"Don't **you** snap at **me**!" I flared. "If you'd come home for tea, like I asked you to, he might not have gone out hiking and we could have avoided this. But no, you had your confounded duty!"

"Amanda--"

I abandoned my unprofitable anger. "Oh, we don't have time to fight now. Please just go. I'm sure you can find him. You two always go to the same haunts. Just try, please?"

Sarek looked up at the sky, both to gage the approach of the storm and its severity.

"See how dark it's getting. And if he gets trapped by the storm for too long, he will still be out at sunset."

"He has had full survival training and survived his Kahs Wan," Sarek said, but in that remote voice that told her he was calculating odds.

"Not in this sort of weather. And there's that big lematya roaming around. I warned him about her, but he might just try to make it back anyway. Oh, Sarek, please!"

The threat of the lematya seemed to decide him. "Very well. I'll look for him."

"Good. Hurry, please. Hurry!"

He gave her a dark look as if about to say something, then shook his head, and went at a lope for the hanger.

_To be continued_

_Review, review, review !_


	7. Chapter 7

**The Visit**

**by**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 7**

_The lematya's tale_

The darkening sky brought R'Darth out of her den early. She stretched, fore and aft, tilting her huge head up to appreciatively take in the scents of the late afternoon. After her long nap, hunger gaped her belly, but didn't cause her much concern. Since she had come to it, this ground had provided good hunting, the best of her considerable experience. A beast as large as herself needed game-rich grounds. And she had cubs in her belly to provide for as well. She had traveled far in search of a territory more suitable to her needs. She had won this one in a series of bloody battles from the previous long term resident. That one had known every nook and cranny of the foothills and had fought hard to keep them before being forced to relocate further up the mountain. R'Darth knew well the trials of relocating to a poorer area.

A rumble of thunder rocked the airwaves, a promise of a storm to come. Responding to this elemental challenge, R'Darth roared back. The hint of ozone in the air rejuvenated her after her long day's sleep and sharpened her hunger as well, kindling an overwhelming desire for prey. Thinking of it she flexed her claws, rolling her shoulders, every muscle rippling. She kneaded her huge paws on the ground in impatience, waiting for the wind to bring what she sought. Thunder rolled out across the hills again and she roared back and scored the rock face in her fury, leaving long gashes in the stone. Then on the freshening wind, as she searched for any hint of game she caught an unwelcome scent that froze her every muscle.

It was man, the scent of man.

She growled deep in her throat.

The scent of man was more than unwelcome, it was the scent of the enemy to her. Twice she'd come too close to the denizens of men, and twice in her encounters with them, she'd lost. Not only had she fallen to their weapons, but she'd lost her hard won lucrative territories, waking up far from the lands she'd striven in battle to win from her rivals. And to add to the stress of relocating, they'd been poorer territories too. The more remote lands were less desirable, not as much water, not as much game. So she had made her way back. These rich foothills suited her, except for this pervasive scent of man.

She been following the tracks of one particular man since she'd first come across them. But that one had been long gone by the time she had picked up his trail and followed it down the mountain to his lair. She'd sniffed along his booted passage, tested the strength of his lair's defenses and reluctantly retreated. She'd come back down the mountain, once, twice, searching for him outside of his walled and charged lair, eager to revenge her past defeats. But that one wisely never stirred when the sun dipped and true predators hunted. Never had she picked up his fresh scent, only the signs of his previous passage. But now, here he was. She leaned into the wind, her nostrils flared, ears pricked, saliva dripping in anticipation, and caught the scent again, full on her sharpened senses. And sat back on her powerful haunches in disappointment.

No. It was not quite the same scent. Not exactly. She opened her jaws wide, tasting as well as smelling the scent. No. There was a difference in the blood. But a similarity as well. A pack member then, if not pack leader. She leaned forward again. Yes, pack member, and young as well. A cub, perhaps easy prey. She would have preferred to take out the leader, but cubs grew to become alphas as well. She would take this man-cub before it grew. And with any luck, her hunt would bring out the alpha, and she'd have them both, her revenge complete. Then, when the time came to birth her own cubs, this territory would be theirs alone.

She extended and retracted her claws again, once, twice, reflexively, readying herself for battle. And then head high, following the air scent, she loped down the mountain after the wayward man-cub. Above, the thunder crashed, and the wind whipped her tawny fur, blowing her scent away from her, and the man-cub's to her. The wind was with her. A good omen. And good hunting to her.


End file.
